To be honest, I find this question almost as ridiculous as the Obama birthplace issue.

A very valid question. If Ahmadinejad is Jewish why is he waging a holy war against his own people? But Hitler was part Jewish as well and look what he did to his people.

There's no credible evidence for that.

edit: For Hitler having Jewish ancestry, that is.

The idea that ancestry makes one Jewish needs to go away. Whether you interpret Judaism as a religion or a culture, neither of those is heritable.

The idea that Judaism is heritable stems from the Jewish custom of requiring all those without Jewish mothers to undergo conversion rites. People frequently misinterpret this to mean that if your mother is Jewish, then you are Jewish, when in fact you are merely "pre-approved."

Whenever I mention that my mother is Jewish, the response is always "oh, doesn't that mean you're Jewish?"

NO.

There is no such thing as "Jewish blood," or "Jewish genes", aside from those coding for the obvious physical characteristics (hair, perhaps noses). The idea that there is more than that is frankly an invention of the "purity"-obsessed white supremacist movement.

Well when you have the lineage and the claim of being "God's people," then I would think that being Jewish by birth is a pretty important thing.

I mean, hell, they have the best selling book in the world all about them.

Jewish people are a race just as much as Blacks, whites, and Asians (etc, etc, etc). Is it really that important? No. But it still is a race.

And, when you especially consider the long war that the Jews and the Arabs have against each other, don't you think it's intriguing that Ahmadinejad (who calls for the destruction of Israel) might be Jewish?

No, I'm sorry. This is not true at all. Judaism is NOT a race. It might be an ancestry (i.e. my family is ancestrally European), even a religion or state of being, but it is NOT a race.

I seriously doubt you will find ANYONE of scientific merit that would say otherwise.

How would you define a race then?

I'm not arguing I just have never thought of it before. I always figured being Jewish was a religion as people who were not Jewish could take up the faith but one can hardly decide upon a new race.

Interestingly you say your heritage is European, would European be a race also in your eyes? Or would it have to be broken further down into smaller parts to be considered a race.

When it boils down to it what is a race anyway?

Actually, I think you have a point. I've always been annoyed how they are called a race, but now that I think about it, I have a different take:

In the context of religion, a Jewish person is whoever decided to be Jewish; that's fairly obvious. But in the context of race I think they can be called a race, independent from religion, but referring to their ancestry. People seem to bundle these contexts together which sort of makes a mess of things.

The term "race", though to be used with great care, might apply to the Jewish community to a certain degree insofar as converting to Judaism is subject to very strong regulations by the Jewish community, and therefore doesn't happen very often.
One might compare this to a population that is relatively isolated from the rest of the world by whatever physical barriers, yet big enough to provide a sufficiently large gene pool. Certain distinctive features may of course become predominant under these circumstances; but again, I'd be very careful concerning the term "race" in reference to humans anyway.
This argument, of course, is totally disregarding the fact that non-Jewish people do not necessarily have to convert to Judaism in order to produce offspring with Jewish people.
However, assuming a pronounced awareness of heritage and tradition in conservative communities, it is likely to find a relatively "pure" Jewish genotype in all who consider themselves Jewish, whereas people of "mixed" heritage would be less likely to identify themselves as Jews. Therefore the concept of a Jewish "race" is a self-perpetuating phenomenon, with everyone living up to it contributing to its continuance.

Read what I said again, then revise your statement.

I never said Judaism is a race. I said the Jewish people were a race. Judaism is a religion. The Jewish people are a race.

Furthermore, if you would consider Middle-Eastern a race, you would have to consider the Jewish people a race. If you consider Black as a race, or Asian as a race, or Caucasian as a race, then you *must* consider Jews as a race.

EDIT: Even according to this site the SCOTUS has ruled that Jews are a race.

I (thought I) clearly stated that I was referring to ancestry.
Ancestry refers to the part of the world that your ancestors hailed from. If my parents were Swedish, I would not change my race from "caucasian" to "Swedish".

Besides all that, there are serious doubts that race exists at all. I've never seen any point in it, and I'm all for abolishing it forever.

Jewish people are not a race, no matter how you phrase it. They're just NOT. You seem to be having a hard time understanding what race is. "Middle-Eastern" is NOT a race. Middle Easterners are considered Caucasian.

If you *must* consider Jews as a race, then I guess you will also have to consider Amish people as a race, as they can also be traced back to a central group.

This whole argument is ridiculous.

An ethnic group is a group of humans whose members identify with each other, through a common heritage that is real or presumed.

The term race or racial group usually refers to the categorization of humans into populations or groups on the basis of various sets of heritable characteristics.

You are confusing these two concepts.

Then how could we possibly consider the holocaust a genocide?

That word is legitimated by the intention of those who did it. Their inaccuracy in strict terms of genetics is irrelevant.

What about Tay-Sachs? Huntingtons? I would consider these, being genetic diseases, a heritable characteristic that marks a race. For instance Ashkenazis are a race that have been brought about by religious practices which have had the effect of isolating the gene pool. This is true of other Jewish populations as well, through which the discrimination of other populations and strict marriage rules have led to certain genetic traits being passed down for hundreds to thousands of years. Similarly, I would say the Amish might be on their way to becoming a race as well.

Disagree about the Huntingtons and other inherited diseases, since establishing a "race" would require carriers of the repsctive genes to precreate with each other exclusively, which is of course a bulls**t assumption.

Agree about the religious populations that by artificial genetic selection (marriage rules) are devolping a distinct genotypical pattern that might qualify as a "race", biologically speaking.